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Norse Mythology
NOTE: I shaved off *names* where possible. JIS = Thank Satyr Just Satyr fro trying to help with Skype. Joes: We've got a real winner today. http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Hellivision/hercules.htm The Hellivision section is still the best, I tell ya. : This is just so sickening!!! Here are the lyrics from Walt Disney's movie Hercules. The song is titled, ''THE GOSPEL TRUTH... It's just the dumb Hercules song set to a gospel track. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRq7lLawQB4 But according to Stewart, merely using the word "gospel" in conjunction with a silly, not all that great cartoon movie based on mythology means Satan is lovingly shoving grenades of pure spite into the eye sockets of every one of the kids in the front row. If this is all it takes to give the guy an aneurysm of indignation, then Jesus must be swooning at his example because by now he's just a puddle of blood. : ''Ems: Walt Disney is straight out of the pits of Hell. Satan is using Disney's movies and music to brainwash children, leading them into apostasy and heathendom. The muses (i.e., Hercules daughters) do their job of singing songs in the movie and several times state "...that's the gospel truth." Myth is now Gospel truth??? And here I thought the Bible was the ONLY Gospel truth. They seem to present Hercules as a 'Jesus-type' hero who went into the river of death and brought out a soul, Meg's, and thus by doing such a deed that was in his heart (due to love) he became a god. Clearly, Greek mythology and the Word of God are diametrically opposed to each other. The Bible is Truth; but Greek mythology is fiction. It is obvious that the heathens at Walt Disney don't see any difference between the Bible and Greek mythology. Joes: When the fuck did Jesus pluck a soul out of a river? That's St. Peter's job, asswad. It's sort of understandable that you're so dumb since every intelligence agency in the world indepedently styled your dossier as "Nitwit #1," but I still would have expected the basic ability to parse intention from fiction. At what point did any of that diminish Christianity? OBVIOUSLY THE FUCKING ANCIENT GREEKS ARE GOING TO THINK THEIR MYTHOLOGY IS TRUE, that it's ''"the gospel." You probably think the fine folks at Disney should always depict all non-Christian people throughout history as incorrigibly foul and confused since they didn't let your cracker jack Jew into their hearts. But no, since they're depicted as believing differently from you, it's clearly Disney brainwashing your kids to piss all over Christianity. Get a hold of yourself, you fucking infant, before you blow a goddamn gasket. Case in point, famous and influential apologist C.S. Lewis didn't believe exactly as Stewart does, therefore he was an agent of Satan bent on deception. : '''Reality of Truth verses Myth' : Popular children's author, C.S. Lewis, believed the Book of Job is "unhistorical" (Reflections on the Psalms, pp. 110), and that the Bible contained "error" (pp. 110, 112) and is not divinely inspired (The Inklings, p. 175). :: "I have the deepest respect for Pagan myths, still more for myths in the Holy Scriptures" (The Problem of Pain, p.71) : C.S. Lewis was an unsaved heretic, who is burning in hellfire this moment. C.S. Lewis is popular with the Devil's crowd today, because he gave the "appearance" (2nd Corinthians 11:13-14) of being a true Christian; but he was an imposter working for Satan. '' Yeah, they play C.S. Lewis audiobooks all the time at orgies and cultic sacrifices. Satanists think he's a fucking riot. There's nary a passing moment they're not yearning to rush into Narnia erection-first. Nothing goes with a spot of nude blood smearing and newborn ritual branding quite like the dulcet tones of an apologist explaining why the problem of evil can be squared with free will over eleven books. To say nothing of HILLARY CLINTON'S interesting and evil debauchery. ''Ems: Young children are extremely impressionable, which is exactly why Hillary Clinton wants to confiscate your preschooler...' : ''Hillary Clinton’s Hostile Preschool Takeover : BY DARCY OLSEN AND BRUCE FULLER | July 21, 2007 : Sen. Hillary Clinton ignited few fireworks, speaking before the nation's largest teachers union over the July 4 holiday. But one proposal is proving explosive: state-run preschool for all families. : Clinton's proposal — introduced Thursday in the Senate — would give states $28 billion over five years to incorporate the nation's 120,000 preschools now run in firms, churches and storefronts into a government-run system. Don't worry, Stewart----that immensely ominous article is sending NEW WORLD ORDER-mandated chills down my spine, too----but at least the children's suffering won't be prolonged; Hillary doesn't savor her meals. And she'll probably even welcome you to horribly molest her rows and rows of cryo-fetuses too, so it's win-win. : And you can bet that the children in government-controlled preschools are going to receive an unhealthy daily dose of witchcraft, New Age, Evolution and homosexual training, just as other public schools kids do now... Followed by some excerpt from an article written for the slightly right wing propaganda pump World Net Daily, wherein a judge in Massachusetts is apparently court-ordering every kid become gay or some such paranoid bullshit. The thing to note here is how tangential this all is to the title of the article, which is Disney's 'Hercules' Blasphemes the Gospel. From what I can conclude, the thesis is that Hillary Clinton is colluding with C.S. Lewis's corpse to force 4-year-olds to worship the devil, and to that end they're inserting the word "gospel" into the opening song of the movie Hercules (presumably every cell and frame of a Disney-animated feature is conjured magically from the tears of broken, wrist-slitting toddlers). : Walt Disney is leading the way in corrupting children's minds, inoculating them from the Truth of God's Word. Disney has incorporated witchcraft, New Age, demonism, and sexual perversion into many of their movies. For example: Take a look at NARNIA, which features Pan, the sexual god of rape and sexual lust. It is no coincidence that Tumnus (Pan) is found alone with an innocent little girl in his home. As a point of reference, consider the demonic movie, Pan's Labyrinth, featuring an innocent little girl at the mercy of such a hideous demonic creature. Joes: It is no coincidence that DAVID J. STEWART is found alone with an innocent little girl in his home. "Daddy, where's the spear that punctured a hole into the Lord's lovehandle now?" "Unzip and you'll see, Suzie." : In the Disney movie, BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA, Christian parents are demonized, heathen parents are glorified, and fundamental Biblical teachings are attacked. The Devil wants your children!!! Satan isn't going to send a representative of the Church of Satan to your front door. No, rather, he's going to lure your kids away from God using Walt Disney and C.S. Lewis, and all the other demonic influences on children today. '' Here's an idea. If God had simply crafted a more compelling set of scriptures, none of this would be an issue. As it stands, the movie Hercules is more entertaining and moral bet for your children's entertainment than the Bible could ever hope to be. Unless you find Samson tying torches to the tails of foxes in order to burn the enemy's crops a wholesome family adventure. And considering world demographics, I'd say you and your God are doing a pretty terrible job. At this point, Satan really could just send a representative of the Church of Satan to front doors and expect a less chilly response than your bug-eyed raving. Pro tip, Stewart, candy doesn't have to be a last resort. : ''Greek mythology is saturated with sexual immorality, demonism, and idolatry. As the sky god, Zeus had easy access to the women of the world and took full advantage of it. Zeus slept with anyone he could god or human. Disney is so messed up!! It is a shame that Disney would refer to the pagan immoral teachings of Greek mythology as "the Gospel truth." The Gospel is not a trifle matter. I'm sure that in the movie, Zeus is raping everything in sight. That sounds a lot like Disney. At the climax of the movie, Zeus suddenly squares on Hades and rapes him into a barely recognizable pulp while the rest of the cast cheers him on. And then every credit that scrolls down is replaced with HAIL SATAN in all caps. With all the female characters dancing in jeans, swinging around briefcases like no tomorrow. Will the nightmare never end? Ems: The following is a list of sexual perversions perpetrated by the so-called heroes of the Bible. A list that is by no means exhaustive. *Abraham's wife (read: womb on legs) wasn't cutting it, so they cut a deal and he engaged in a little sexy time with Sarah's servant, Hagar. While preggers, Hagar looked at Sarah funny so Sarah slapped the shit out of her. While escaping Sarah's sadistic abuse of a pregnant lady, God sent an angel down to enjoin Hagar to return for some more beatings because she's still a servant. Sarah is basically the mother of the three desert religions everyone's got to suffer through to this day, so you know she got off on torture. I bet Ishmael wishes Sarah's in utero pummeling had sealed the job. *Joes: Abraham and Sarah passed themselves off as brother and sister so that the Pharaoh would take Sarah as his wife, which just happens to get Abe some serious coin. In fact, they did it twice. Yeah, I'm sure it was because they were scared of the pharaoh, yeah huh. I'm not going to say Abraham was a stone age pimp, but I am going to insinuate it quite heavily. By the way, Isaac pulls the same stunt a fucking third time. This is just Genesis, people, and already the creator of the universe is recycling plots like a fucking soap opera. *Ems: When faced with a detestable horde of rapists in Sodom damned, Lot all but throws his two teenage daughters at them and crosses his fingers. Sure, Abraham was ready and willing to sacrifice Isaac, but at least he wasn't going to stop by your kiddy rape alcove with him first, Stewart. Lot's household must have been one hell of a kaching noise for a therapist, since those daughters unhesitatingly get Lot drunk and rape him when they think they're the only people left on the Earth. I don't know about you, but psychologically that wouldn't be my first priority. *Joes: King David, that proudest of Christ's ancestors, dances and exposes himself to his maids for giggles. (His wife, Michal rebukes him for having done so, and as a consequence she is made barren.) He then fornicated with Bathsheba with no remorse. He even has Bathsheba's husband, a soldier in his own army, offed so he can conceal the identity of the child's father. David realizes he done goofed and repents, but naturally THIS TIME, God gets arbitrarily pissed--probably because David had thought of some awful, heinous sexual sin quicker than God could command it himself--and so he, of course, punishes... the baby, who drops dead of illness. See, that was the solution all along, David. *Ems: Wise King Solomon boasted 700 wives and 300 concubines, all foreign princesses. I think Solomon might have been cooking his books a bit. The thousandfold skanks led Solomon away from the God of Israel and towards empty idolatry. God gets jealous and punishes Solomon by dividing his kingdom. (1 Kings 11) "Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen." "''Why, that sounds suspiciously like an ad hoc rationalization! No wonder I turned away from you, with lame as shit excuses like those," replied Solomon, in his unmatched wisdom. Norse Mythology Joes: It's time to explore a mythology that's worth a shit. That's right, this session will be dedicated to the sagas and skalds, grim and boozy, of the northern sea. This is going to be no less than a 3-parter, because anything less would be a grave podcastly injustice. Rewinding to the Viking Age, ere the tragic Christianization of Scandinavia, also dubbed by scholars as the "Enlamening," we find a tremendously rich 12-layer cake of awesome. Unfortunately, shitty monks thought their bloody hobo was better than beer hall warrior paganism, and so the old customs were recorded with an obscuring shadow of bias. Ems: You sound a bit bitter about it. Joes: Why yes, I am a bit bitter about it. Ems: Thankfully, when it comes to the wide world of Germanic-derived paganisms, Norse religion is the most well documented. '''Defining Norse Mythology' Norse mythology is the study of the myths told in Germanic countries. These include Germany (bet you didn’t see that one coming), The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and The Faroe Islands (which are under Danish control and lie between Norway and Iceland). The mythology we’ll be laughing at today relates to pre-Christian times, especially the Viking Age (the late 8th to 11th centuries). The mythology of Scandinavia is ultimately derived from early Germanic myth, as well as the larger pool of Indo-European basic fables. Sources So, given that there are no Vikings left to tell us about this crazy shit, how do we know about it? Well, it seems that there was more than raping, pillaging and wearing HELMETS WITHOUT HORNS ON THEM OKAY LISTENERS!? going on during the time of the Vikings. Some people wrote the myths of this pagan time down, probably because they realised that if they continued to be only handed down through oral tradition, no one would believe they ever really existed. That’s how freaky these myths are. There are a few written sources of Norse mythology. A dude called “Snorri Sturluson” (sounds like one of the seven dwarves), was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. Snorri wrote the Prose Edda or Younger Edda, (a narrative of Norse mythology), and several other poetic and historic works. A prevailing theory dubbed euhumerism stated that mythological gods actually began as human war leaders and kings whose funeral sites subsequently developed cult followings. As people called upon a dead war leader when going into battle or facing tribal hardship, they began to venerate the figure. Eventually, the king or warrior becomes remembered only as a god. It was also suggested that as tribes defeated others, they explained their victory by proposing that their own gods were in battle with the gods of the other, and handed them their god like arse on a plate. Once again, shades of Julian Jaynes right there. (How so?) In the prologue of The Prose Edda, the Nordic gods are described as human Trojan warriors who left Troy after its fall. These warriors settled in northern Europe, where they were accepted as divine kings because of their superior culture and technology. Remembrance ceremonies later conducted at their burial sites degenerated into heathen cults, turning the dead warriors into gods. Then there are three distinct books: The first deals with the creation and destruction of the world of the Norse gods, and many other aspects of Norse mythology. Instead of running down the characters first and getting to the various aspects of Norse myth (e.g. cosmology) later, I propose the reverse. There are too many gods to go through first and the listener will grow bored unless they're described more dynamically. The second part of the Prose Edda is based on the "language of poetry," is basically a dialogue between the Norse god of the sea, Ægir and the god of poetry Bragi, in which both Norse mythology and discourse on the nature of poetry are intermingled. Lastly, the third part is some kind of verse (with explanatory notes) that exemplifies old Norse poetry. The content of the poem is praise of a king of Norway in the 1200s, and his co-regent and future father-in-law , for their generosity and valour in battle. “There once was a God from Asgard, Who woke in the morning……..” Anyway, let’s look at some of the people, places and stories of Norse mythology. Joes: I'm going to be working off the condensed versions of the stories worked out by a scholar in a book I bought especially for this occasion. That's right, I'm so dedicated to doing this right, I went out and bought a book. A real life, physical book with pages you turn by hand after huffing out your exertion from the last page you turned. It must be said that there are no official versions of any of these myths, since religious belief has never been monolithic even when there's a book that says it's the only damn book (lol Islam). As such, these retellings and translations are by necessity stitched together from different accounts. 'In the Beginning' reciting from memory to avoid copypasta The world is nine worlds, nine worlds on three planes. But before that, of course, there was the void, the chasm that divided the fire on one side of the nothingness and the ice on the other. Muspelheim, the bastion of flame, too bright and biting. And Niflheim to the north, a reign of mist and sheer cold. Their rivers met in the great gap at the center of the all-nothing and birthed the frost giant Ymir--a giant among giants--who was evil from the first. How something can be evil without any other beings to be evil towards, I don't know. The void also gave rise to the mother cow, Audumla, of whose enormous flowing milk teats Ymir availed himself. Maybe that's why Ymir was evil, he kept motorboating the poor cow's udder. And the cow's distress rang out with cries of "ohh yyessss" and "FASTER MMMM" I'm horrible, verily Ems: Before even the giant frost giant and his suckling cow, however, branched Yggdrasill, the timeless and unimaginably vast, life-sustaining WORLD TREE. Yggdrasill is one of those names you really just have to remember. It will survive Ragnarok, the ultimate cataclysm known to all, since just as surely as it has no beginning, it will have no end. You can fact check this right now by looking out your window. The mother cow licked the first god out of the ice, since there's not much to do when your life is spent getting your teats sucked by a being whose brains will eventually become the clouds. Her tongue-to-ice craftsmanship must have gotten truly superb. But then, the giant gave birth to a 6-headed being by simple knocking its two knees together, presumably to shut the cow up. The first man and woman came out of his armpits, too. Evidently, this bisexuality would have been viewed upon with disgust by the Vikings as inherently evil, much like when Loki would transform into a female horse to seduce another horse and give birth to Odin's fantastic eight-legged steed--which, it should be noted, is what's bound to happen when you turn into a mare and get impregnated by a wily giant's amazingly athletic horse, of course you're going to give birth to a foal with eight legs. Though I think I might be getting a head of myself. Joes: Where's Whelve, she could confirm or deny Ems: We don't want her anywhere near your horse questions. Her innocence level isn't exactly brimming as it is. Joes: Yes, let us return to the man who got licked out of the ice, otherwise known as Whelve's favorite passtime. Ems: As the first god, Ice Block Man may have felt a bit inadequate seeing as he was licked into existence by a cow, but he's still better than the god who was formed from a communal spit kettle. Any feelings of inadequacy were doubtlessly vanquished with the birth of his grandson, The Terrible One, Odin himself... and his two non-mattering brothers. Odin is regarded with mingled terror and admiration (but mostly terror) as the warmongering and magic-wielding Allfather, god of the gods. Incidentally, Yggdrasill means Horse of the Terrible One, or Odin's Horse. The trees of hanged men would often be alluded to as horses; why, I haven't the foggiest. Odin was the god to whom the pagans of old would offer human sacrifices, specifically hanged men with spears in their sides. Joes: He liked his sacrifices like he liked his penis, quite hung Ems: Quiet, you. Joes: Nay, but I shall speak my peace. Odin got it on so often that it'd make Zeus the Rapey-Penised blanch with shame. One time-- Ems: Speaking privileges revoked. Non-Doctor. Joes: Hrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmm Ems: Odin and his non-mattering brothers decided one day that they were going to slay the shit out of Ymir, and craft the nine worlds out of his various body parts. Midgard, the world of men, is made out of his eyebrows. His eyebrows. The deluge of gore wiped out most of the frost giants, only for them to repopulate, making this flood just as pointless as the Bibilical one. The sky was made from his skull, and held up by four dwarves on each of the corners of the compass. C'mon, Odin, if you're going to set anybody on sky-hauling duty, make it the tall people, not the short ones. Asshole. Joes: Hrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmm Ems: Above Midgard lies Asgard, the realm of gods. And below Midgard lies your basic underworld / Land of the Dead. On these three planes are the nine worlds, including realms for races such as giants and dwarves and elves. Apart from Yggdrasill which connects all three planes with its roots, there's also the Rainbow Bridge, Bifrost, which connects Asgard to Midgard. Each of Yggdrasill's three roots touches another sacred well, and the one in Asgard is where the gods commune every day, and where the three fates cook up destiny. The sun and the moon are chariot drivers chased by wolves, and the wolves will catch up with the sun and the moon at Ragnarok and be devoured. At that point can anybody blame those wolves, they worked damn hard for that meal. Joes: HRMMMMMMMMMMMMMM Ems: YES, JOE? Joes: *Pah!* I need to say about how like there's a dragon at the base of Yggdrasill that like scratches it up and shit and mmph Ems:'' I'' was getting to that, and I will treat it much more eloquently, you dumb non-doctor. The name of the dragon that scrabbles and snipes at poor Yggdrasill's base is Niddhogg. Through the scurrying messenger squirrel Ratatosk, it engages in a Twitter war of insults with the eagle at the top of the tree. An eagle with a hawk perched on its brow. Sorry Niddhogg, you lost because you don't have a hawk perched on your motherfucking brow. END DISCUSSION. 'The War of the Aesir and the Vanir' Joes: Now let's about the gods a bit more. In Norse folklore, women can practice magic and become highly respected seeresses named volva (by contrast, men practicing magic was forbidden as elgi or unmanly--nobody said Norse folklore was terrible progressive). Just as poets enjoyed a high place in pagan societies due to their ability to transmit history and to wield words, shamans could appeal to supernatural forces and spirits on behalf of humans. However, some seeresses, as you can imagine, were portrayed as less than wholesome. Such was the case with the volva who sparked the war between the Aesir war gods and the Vanir fertility gods, the two races of gods that would fuse into one. This myth is probably the result of a real life truce between two feuding cults; as always, at the brink one religion doesn't replace the other, they simply fold into each other. So one day, a volva that's inexplicably obsessed with gold just shows up in Asgard to share her depraved gold lust with the Aesir, among whose host includes Odin, Thor, and Ems's favorite, Frigg. The Vanir are just as disgusted with her Yosemite Sam-esque "GOWUHLD! GO''WUHLD!!" as the Aesir are, and they think "Man, those Aesir must be depraved to have let crazy like ''her in." The Aesir try to burn her and stab her with pikes three times but every time she emerges unscathed. "Well, burning her a third time ''didn't work. Hey, let's try burning her again." Indestructible and insatiably greedy, a maid after my own heart. Tensions rise and they go to war once Odin flings a spear at the other side. In the end, however, they're evenly matched, so they strike up a peace settlement and exchange leaders. As a sign of fraternity, the Vanir and Aesir all spit in a communal pot, out of which is born the wise god Kvasir. Whenever you hear the word "wise" in Norse mythology, remember that it means "wise in name only," because they never really seem to demonstrate any particular wisdom. In fact, Kvasir is killed almost as quickly as he's born, his blood of wisdom extracted by greedy dwarves to be mixed with honey and fashioned into a Mead of Poetry. Spit, blood, and honey, truly a concoction of muses. That Mead of Poetry falls in the hands of an evil and boastful giant, whom Odin goes after, seeking to recover it from its hiding place. Despite the gods and giants intermingling by marriage, always assume any given giant is meant to be seen as chaotic evil and any given god this side of Loki is meant to be seen as lawful good... despite Odin's obviously evil, untrustworthy nature. Odin disguises himself as a traveller named Bolverk (lit. "evil-doer," nice disguise, Odin) and gets the giant's brother's work force of serfs with scythes to inadvertently slice open one another's necks as they jostle with surprise after Odin sharpens their scythes with a wedge. He then goes to that giant's brother and gets him to agree to get the giant with the mead to give it up once Odin / "Bolverk" has completed the job the nine serfs were meant to do. Since Odin has the strength of nine men, he does, shocking his employer. That completed, Odin sleeps with the poor little girl giant that was ordered to guard the mead's hiding spot; she falls in love and gives him the mead. The giant who stole the mead from the dwarves spots Odin very dignifiedly storing the vaunted Mead of Poetry, the blood of his comrade, in his cheeks. I'd have laughed but the giant gets very incensed indeed and both pursuer and pursuee turn into eagles with a spell only those who have drunk the Mead would know. Eagle-Odin arrives at Asgard just in time to ''spit the mead into pots that have been set up by the other gods, which, damn, that was some foresight on their parts. A bit of the mead does from his ill-suited eagle beak onto realms below, nourishing human poets. Why I skipped ahead to the myth is because I want to include this passage from THE BOOK. Paraphrasing: "Odin would often disguise his otherwise instantly recognizable mien by wearing a cloak, and a wide-brimmed hat to hide his SINGLE EYE. Oh and he's still got two ravens on him." I think I can see a bit of a flaw with that logic, don't you, Ems. Ems:Yeah, who the fuck wears wide brimmed hats Odin sacrificed an eye to one of the sacred wells for wisdom, which he should really get his money back on, if he needed to go through all that effort to grab the Mead of Poetry. He even hanged himself like one of his human sacrifices, swinging on dead-footed on a branch of Yggdrassil for 9 nights, just so that he could learn the spells and runes of the land of the dead. Before we move on, we have to talk about how the wall around the realm of the Aesir was reconstructed after the bloody war, which we've already alluded to with the tale of Loki's dabbling in equine seduction. This (read: EVILLL) giant tromps on over to the gods' abode to make a proposition; should he reconstruct the wall within a certain time frame, he wants the ravishing fertility goddess Freyja as his wife and the sun and moon as his wages (intending to block off their light and yuk evil yuks). Loki, the trickster, advises that they get him to build the wall but defraud him of his demands by shortening his timeframe to something impossibly short. With the help of his amazing horse, the giant does in fact come close to completing the job on time, and Freyja's tears of gold drown the gods' hearts as bounteously as her fine ass drowns Odin's mouth with saliva. Loki is forced to right his wrong and so he draws away the horse with a come hither neigh. The giant goes berserker mode and Odin revels in the excuse to beat the shit out of it, the end. Odin gets not only a new rampart around his digs, but an eight-legged steed named Sleipnir, so fleet no other horse can catch up to it. 'The Norse Pantheon' Snorri Sturluson delineated that there were 12 goddesses to rival the 12 gods for importance, but not many stories featuring them have survived, unfortunately. Fucking bloody hobo--yes, I am blaming Jesus for this, suck that shit Kirk Hastings, your messiah can suck my ass because he's fucking atrocious. The gods that are WORTH A SHIT and that we can come to know intimately through the Meat Mutant podcast are Odin, Frigg, Thor, Freyja, Loki, Heimdall, Balder, and some other people too. Odin. The Terrible One and one-eyed wonder is the top dog of the Norse Pantheon, as evidenced by his seat above everything, his access to dozens of spells, and his being married to a gal named Frigg. They are the rulers of Asgard. Asgard is essentially the country or capital city of the Norse Gods. Valhalla*, where those that have died in battle gather in a grand hall in honour of them, is located within Asgard. Odin is associated with about 500 contradictory things (as most Pagan gods are), including war, battle, victory and death, but also wisdom, magic, poetry, prophecy, and the hunt. Now Odin fathered many sons (including Thor), but, thankfully, we will not be going through a list of one hundred “begats”, Old Testament style. Genealogies are not as interesting in this degenerate modern age. Much more interestingly, let’s discuss all the magical and weird inanimate and animate things associated with Odin, coz there are a lot of them, and they are freaky as. Firstly, he has a spear called the Gungnir, which never misses its target (just quietly, I think this may be why Scandinavians always win the javelin competition at the Olympics). Apparently Odin’s spear was made by dwarves, under the mastery of a blacksmith dwarf. I guess that dwarf (probs named “Smithy”) was REALLY busy, given that 8 legged horse and all…. Odin also has a magical ring, called the Draupnir. Why is his ring magical, do you ask? Well, every ninth night eight new rings 'drip' from his ring, each one of the same size and weight as the original. You see, Odin’s ring is magical gold ring, and apparently this was also crafted by dwarves……dude, was Northern Europe some little person slave labour camp or what? Satan Claus and his elves? Don’t tell me it wasn’t. Joes: 9 is the operative number in all of Norse myth. Odin also owned some kick arse animals. His two ravens called Huginn and Muninn (Thought and Memory), flew around Earth daily and reported the happenings of the world to Odin in Valhalla at night. These two ravens sit on Odin's shoulders, and tell Odin everything they see and hear. Because of this, Odin is sometimes referred to as "raven-god". Along with wolves and eagles, ravens were associated chiefly with war, Odin's main domain--they were always seen at the sites of the aftermath of battle, beating their sleek black wings and cawing at corpses. Ravens are also really damn smart, so they can appeal to his poetry / wisdom side. 'Frigg' As his wife, she is the only one other than Odin who is permitted to sit on his high seat, the truly unpronounceable Hlidskjalf, and look out over the universe. What a privilege, to be pounded by waves of awe from the marvelous array of the cosmos from above and by Odin's terrible instrument of vigor from below. Frigg was a goddess associated with married women--She was called up by women to assist in giving birth to children. The common archetypes of women were married helpmeet, innocent girl, and lustful seducer. Freyja definitely fulfills the lustful seducer archetypes. Historia Langobardorum The Langobard historian Paul the Deacon, who died in southern Italy in the 790s, was proud of his tribal origins and related how his people once had migrated from southern Scandinavia.[17] In his work Historia Langobardorum, Paul relates how Odin's wife Frea (Frigg/Freyja) had given victory to the Langobards in a war against the Vandals.[17] She is depicted as a wife who knows how to get her own way even though her husband thinks he is in charge. The Winnili and the Vandals were two warring tribes. Odin favored the Vandals, while Frea favored the Winnili. After a heated discussion, Odin swore that he would grant victory to the first tribe he saw the next morning upon awakening—knowing full well that the bed was arranged so that the Vandals were on his side. While he slept, Frea told the Winnili women to comb their hair over their faces to look like long beards so they would look like men and turned the bed so the Winnili women would be on Odin's side. When he woke up, Odin was surprised to see the disguised women first and asked who these long bearded men were, which was where the tribe got its new name, the Langobards ("longbeards"). Odin kept his oath and granted victory to the Winnili (now known as the Lombards), and eventually saw the wisdom of Frea's choice. 'Freyja' GOWUHLD GOWUHLD She's the really loose, ravishingly boner-popping fertility goddess who's also kind of into war. She dabbles, sharing the host of the slain with Odin; Odin's hall is the infamous Valhalla, hers is Folkvangr. Every Freyja story either features her crying tears of gold because yet another hideous entity wants her as his bride, or prostituting herself for some bling. Her famous necklace, the Necklace of the Brisings, she obtained after selling her body to four dwarves who repulsed her for four nights. Those were the dwarves who smithed it, it wasn't just some dude going "No problem, Frejya, I'll give you the necklace--once you randomly blow these four dwarf brothers." The necklace doesn't have any special powers, it's just a necklace. When Odin catches wind of her shameful promiscuousness, he orders Loki to snatch away the necklace from her impregnable hall, and Loki shapeshifts into a fly and grabs it. Odin then extorts Freyja, telling her that if she wants her bling back, she needs to stir up massive wars in the world of humans, wars so gruesome and bloody that fallen soldiers are given new life simply to be slain again and again. Oh Odin, you're terrible. More specifically, the injuction is thus: : She could have it back if she could make two kings, themselves ruling twenty kings each, battle one another, and cast a spell so that each time one of their numbers falls in battle, they will again spring up and fight again. A blatant Christian interpolation in the tale states that when a righteous Christian warrior enters the fray and smites the poor soldiers, only then will they know peace. As for Odin and Freyja's shared association with the slain, an interesting note, Freyja is oft depicted as weeping after he estranged husband, Od; lots of scholars think "Od" is just another name for Odin. Furthermore, it is theorized that Frigg and Freyja used to be the same figure, which branched out into two separate figures over time. She rides a chariot pulled by two cats, both of which must be roughly the size of Herschel (i.e., Yggdrasill size) 'Freyr' The phallusy fertility god and Freyja's brother. Especially associated with Sweden and seen as an ancestor of the Swedish royal house, which explains a lot. The gods gave him Álfheimr, the realm of the Elves, as a teething present. He rides the shining dwarf-made boar Gullinbursti and possesses the ship Skíðblaðnir which always has a favorable breeze and can be folded together and carried in a pouch when it is not being used. The most extensive surviving Freyr myth relates Freyr's falling in love with the female jötunn Gerðr. Eventually, she becomes his wife but first Freyr has to give away his magic sword which fights on its own "if wise be he who wields it". Although deprived of this weapon, Freyr defeats the jötunn Beli with an antler. However, lacking his sword, Freyr will be killed by the fire jötunn Surtr during the events of Ragnarök. Don't think too highly of Freyr, he was so lovestruck by the shiny pinup giant he languished and went "woe, oh woe is me" for like a week and didn't talk to anybody before Odin was like wtf. Freyr's servant had to go fetch her to be his wife, which, would YOU say yes? And then Freyr's servant had to basically extort her into it, by listing all the nasty destructive magic he'd curse her with if she rebuffed Freyr. to tale 11 'Heimdall' The lookout whose eyesight and hearing surpass all, and he surveys the rainbow bridge. He's got golden teeth, and is said to be born of 9 mothers, somehow. There's a Maury episode if ever there was one. "You... are NOT the mother." *she starts dancing* I wonder if it would be nice to have nine moms. It would be, I think, unless they bickered. Furthermore, he's described as the whitest of the gods, which spurred tons of Viking-wannabe white supremacists (white supremacists are heretofore referred to as "sperm errors") to protest the Thor movie for casting a black actor in the role. Number one, "whitest of the gods" is almost definitely referring to his hair color, fucking everybody in Scandinavia was glue-ass white back then. Two, it's a fictional goddamn comics universe, they could have made Heimdall a goddamn little Jamaican girl if they liked. What, are you going to raise your pitchorks because movie-Loki wasn't giving birth to an eight-legged horse? Three, die. Heimdall is said to be the originator of social classes among mankind. I imagine sperm errors might misconstrue the translation "holy races" as "white people are the best," but in the end we're all children of Heimdall! 'Balder' Balder is the romance novel cover heartthrob of the gods. But the most well known aspect of him is the story of his death. His tragic demise will trigger the obliterating cataclysm of Ragnarok, which eventually will leave Balder amongst the only gods left standing. How's that for irony? He'll be reborn in the new world along with his brother Hodr and Odin's sons. Besides them, only Yggdrasill and a man and woman will survive. How does Balder die? It all started when he and his mom (Odin's wife Frigg) dreamed the same prophetic dream foretelling Balder's woeful biting of the dust. In response, Balder and Frigg had every object and living thing swear never to harm him... except mistletoe, which seemed too innocent and innocuous to bother about. Not to mention that it's only underneath mistletoe that exciting things happen. Upon hearing of this, Loki made a spear out of mistletoe, somehow. I'm going to guess that's yet another artifact Loki had dwarves make, considering they made every other damn thing the gods like to boast about. He hurried to the place where the gods were indulging in their new pastime of hurling objects at Baldr, which would bounce off without harming him. Loki gave the spear to Baldr's brother, the blind god Höðr, who then inadvertently killed his brother with it (other versions suggest that Loki guided the arrow himself). For this act, Odin and the giantess Rindr gave birth to Váli who grew to adulthood within a day and slew Höðr. Now that was some angry sex. Baldr was ceremonially burnt upon his ship, the largest of all ships. A random dwarf was kicked by Thor into the funeral fire and burnt alive. Baldr's wife also threw herself on the funeral fire to await Ragnarök when she would be reunited with her husband (alternatively, she died of grief). Baldr's horse with all its trappings was also burned on the pyre. The ship was set to sea by a giantess, who came riding on a wolf and gave the ship such a push that fire flashed from the rollers and all the earth shook. Nobody half-asses anything in Norse mythology. Except Freyr. In Norse mythology, the realm of Hel with one "l" is ruled over by, guess who, Hel; she gets all the people who died of sickness or old age, which is a bum deal since Odin and Freyja get to gallivant with jolly warriors and valkyries who stab each other for sport while all Hel gets for company is smelly old farts who while away eternity comparing their sores and boils. Hel is apparently also the most normal out of Loki's offspring, since, apart from the eight-legged horse, Loki also sired a gigantic wolf and a serpent so huge it encircles the Earth and bites its own tail. Must be those shapeshifter genes. Frigg gets Hel with one "l" to promise to return Baldur back from the underworld if every living thing and object mourns for him, which is nearly fulfilled, except one giantess spitefully refuses to shed any tears for him. When they find out that the giantess was Loki in disguise, let's just say it's payback time. Uh, hello, people, Baldur never actually did anything. Was he that dreamy that all of creation would blubber their little hearts out for him? And what kind of assholes throw a dude's horse onto his pyre? "You're not weeping hard enough, TRAITOR HORSE!" And think about Hel's feelings, she just got this incredible hotty in her lap, doesn't she deserve a little happiness? 'Thor' The ancient Norsemen regarded Odin as a patron of the nobility; Thor, on the other hand, represented the freemen farmers. Whereas the Allfather Ygg was feared and hated, Thor was well loved as the cool uncle god. Bushy red beard, not terribly bright and quick to anger, he was no match for tricksters and clever ploys, but get his hammer in his hand and his might would surge and he'd smash through anything; particularly giants, whom Thor believed to be fair game, as it were. Thor was above all an entertaining folk hero. The hammer definitely bears mentioning. It would always return to Thor's hand when he willed it, as popularized by the comics adaptation. Not present in the comics is the hammer's phallic symbology; it was invoked in the consecration of marriages. One of the best Norse myths involves Thor reluctantly going in drag and passing himself off as Freyja in order to retrieve his hammer, which had been stolen by a wily giant who lusted after ol' Goldeneye (I bet the amount she cried caused quite the speculation crisis). Loki, naturally, disguises himself as Thor/Freyja's bridesmaid. Already the imagery of cool uncle Thor frowning behind his unmanly veil would have been uproarious to its original audience, but when Loki is forced to invent a reason Thor's eyes are so fierce--namely, that Freyja couldn't sleep for a week in giddy anticipation of her betrothal to the nasty giant--that would have been the peak of comedy. The entire point of the ruse was to get the giant to fetch the hammer from its hiding spot because it was needed to ceremonially seal the wedding with a little phallic tapping on the thighs. Once our bridal savage grasps his hammer once more, the assembled giants know revenge as he flattens them all to smithereens. Think Thor's bloodlust has been sated? Nope. One day he decides he's bored and takes Loki on a quest to kill all the giants of the stronghold hall, Utgard. (No joke, the scanlation of the latest chapter of Attack on Titan came out today and introduced Utgard to the story, literally the day I learned about it). Anyway, Thor takes two human children, a boy and a girl, into his entourage. They had stumbled upon a poor farmer's house and they feasted on Thor's regenerating chariot goats, but the boy had been greedy and sucked the marrow out of one of the bones, leaving that goat lame in one leg once it came back to life. They head out to slay some giants, and, as it turns, end up sleeping in a mysterious hall in the middle of the forest that they discover later was a giant's dropped glove. That giant is a kind of a douche, promising to share his backpack full of food and falling asleep but making it so that it can't be opened, so Thor tries to brain him with his hammer while he snores unawares, three times, seemingly without success. The giant takes them to Utgard, which is peopled by one Utgard-Loki and some more ridiculously huge giants who humiliate Thor and his companions in a series of contests. The most amusing of those contests involves Thor attempting to lift up a giant's cat, but the cat is so flexible its back can arch high up into the air. Almost as impressive as Herschel, but Herschel was the inspiration behind Nyancat, a cosmic traveller light-years away who can be seen from Earth. But don't worry, Thor isn't actually that weak; the whole place is simply a hall of illusions! When he took great big draughts of a flask of mead and only made a little headway, the giant was shocked; the other end of that flask was the ocean! When Thor lost an arm wrestling contest to a little old hag of a giant, he actually was doing surprisingly well against old age itself. The giant cat was actually the world serpent Jormungand. And when Thor attempted to brain the giant from before three times, that punched three square-shaped valleys into the land. 'Loki' Finally, we come to Loki, by far the most interesting of the Norse pantheon. Originally your typical trickster archetype, Loki would help the gods as much as he would cause mischief for them. But later on, he would morph into a singularly evil, relentless enemy of the gods whose spite would ultimately spell doom for the nine worlds. To give you an idea of how much everybody came to hate Loki after he orchestrated the death of Balder, they tied him up with the intestines of his own son and condemned him to be subjected to dripping acidic snake venom. But we'll get to that once we do Ragnarok next episode. They're really ungrateful, though, it's said that Thor's hammer is needed to keep the giants from ransacking Asgard, and who got it for Asgard in the first place? Loki did. Sure, it started with Loki shaving Thor's wife's head bald in her sleep for shits and giggles, but he paid it back by getting the dwarves to make her a head of hair just as shiny and gold as it was before. Not only that, he got them more bling in the process. Loli thought it prudent to pit the craftsmanship of the golden hair against the prowess of another pair of dwarven smiths; if those dwarven smiths could make bling that was better than the hair in the eyes of the gods, they could take Loki's head in the wager, he said with somewhat puzzling confidence. Of course, the gods do indeed think Thor's hammer and Odin's spear and Freyr's portable ship and all of that stuff is awesome, so the dwarves win and they demand Loki's head, troublemaker that he is. Loki dashes off but Thor drags him back, and Loki saves himself by saying it was merely his head they could take, not his neck. The dwarf laughed and complied, electing to sew Loki's lips closed; Loki burned with resentment as the rest of the gods oh so wisely laughed at him. Yes, laugh at the god who owns all your asses. An earlier tale concerns the apples that keep the gods young and healthy. One day Odin and Loki went a-trekkin', only for a giant disguised as an eagle to sabotage their bonfire cooking from the shadows. Odin and Loki were slavering with hunger but the meat never became any less raw; after the eagle showed itself, Loki attacked it with a pole in rage. However, he soon found his hand was stuck to the pole, and the eagle-giant skinned Loki alive dragging him against ice and rock until Loki begged for mercy. The eagle let him go on the condition he'd lure out Idunn and her apples so that he could kidnap her and deprive the gods of their health and vitality. He does so and the gods, graying and wrinkly and weak, enjoin Loki to take Idunn and the apples back, unless he likes the prospect of getting tortured to death. Terrified, Loki says that if the goddess Freyja will lend him her "falcon shape" he will search for Iðunn in the land of Jötunheimr. Loki finds her in the giant's home, turns her into a nut, holds her in his claws, and flies away with her as fast as possible. Yes, a nut. Evidently, Loki can do that. Maybe he turned her into a lovely bunch of coconuts. MORE NEXT TIME!!